Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
Vladimir Putin said:
Vladimir Putin said:
Vladimir Putin said:
Vladimir Putin said:
Vladislav Surkov said:
Dmitry Medvedev said:
none of these draw a line between that historical context and the reason for the invasion; he brings them up because they are relevant to understanding the context surrounding Ukrainian nationalism and the various Ukrainian separatist movements (Crimea, Donbas). The interview you're citing makes it absolutely clear that the conflict is about NATO and the failure of Minsk, was almost resolved in an agreement that provided for Ukrainian neutrality, legal suppression of Ukrainian Nazi groups, and a pledge not to join NATO which was sabotaged at the eleventh hour by Boris Johnson. Ukraine's apparent lack of a firm historical foundation is relevant but not motivating. It is odd that you want to focus on that.
Or did you mean to subtly shift the goalposts from "this is the reason, it's blindingly obvious" to "he said things about it"?
Or did you mean to subtly shift the goalposts from "this is the reason, it's blindingly obvious" to "he said things about it"?
You think it not terribly relevant that he gave several of these quotes in a press conference about his decision to go to war?
You find it unconcerning that the President, as well as the former President, and his personal advisor on Ukraine, have all explicitly denied the existence of their neighbouring country as a sovereign state? Don't think that might have had a part to play in their decision to annex it, no? And you expect people to take that seriously?
What I find notable is that when an Israeli pol denies the chance for Palestinian statehood, you'll point to it (rightfully) as evidence of how little they care about the peace, sovereignty, and security of their neighbours. They don't need to say, "THIS IS WHY WE WENT TO WAR"-- you can see the obvious link between their rancid xenophobia and their actions. But here? Nah: Russian leaders literally begin an annexation, and rant repeatedly about how their target doesn't exist as a state, and you're here quibbling: ahkshually they didn't directly link their denial of statehood to their invasion, in this press conference about the invasion. So they're unrelated! Of course!
Absolute clownshow territory.
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All this talk about history isn't really in Russia's favor anyway. Its hard to imagine a country so consistently aggressive, backwards and damaging to the world order regardless of its form. The Romanovs, the Soviets and now the gangsters in the Kremlin are all belligerent, war mongering, expansionist, oppressive to their own subjects and have a rather disgusting habit of poisoning their subjects with alcoholism.
Its kind of unique for a country to consistently have grotesque governments and Putin might not want to draw attention to this.
Its kind of unique for a country to consistently have grotesque governments and Putin might not want to draw attention to this.
Up until fairly recently, governments didn't feel the need to pretend very hard not to be grotesque. If we decide that West Germany was all sunshine and roses after WW2, that's still living memory, and East Germany a generation later.
Russia worst than most, true.
Sure, but in Putin's narrative, they weren't grotesque. When he talks about the historical land of Russia, there's no real acknowledgement of the fact that Russia conquered most of it. Or rather, his narrative is that the Russian race appeared, then had their territory stolen, and subsequently recovered it - implicitly justly.
For instance, he talks about Lithuania to picture it as sort of Russian, which was then subverted by the Poles. In doing so he is claiming ownership over the territories of medieval Lithuania, which included much of Belarus and Western Ukraine. However, this also could be read to imply he thinks Russia should own current Lithuania as well. This is backed up with when he says Russia had its historical territories at the time of Catherine the Great, which had by then conquered the Baltic States. I would be inclined to view Putin's history lesson as telling us he thinks the Baltic States should be Russian, too, and for NATO to prepare defences accordingly.
His story of WW2 is also illustrative. The real instigator of WW2 was... Poland. Poland first sold out Czechoslovakia for their own gain, and then made the Nazis attack it. Neat little bit of victim-blaming to skip over the whole Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Yes, in that you are putting negative effort into understanding where the Russians are coming from. Did you actually look at the interview/read a transcript of it or did you just trust some propagandist to put some quotes together for you? The interview begins with a meandering look at the history but as the discussion moved toward the present the sharpest focus was put on NATO expansion, refusal of the collective west to negotiate a solution to the apparent plan to use Ukraine to undermine Russian security, and the repeated refusal of Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements as it said it would do.
Yes, mentioning that Poland didn't allow the Soviet Union to traverse its territory to help Czechoslovakia defend itself from some mysterious threat that seems to have disappeared from all recollection of history since 2022 really is quite victim blaming. What was happening in Czechoslovakia that was so important? The answer may be forever lost to time.
Nothing of that is new.
All those issues have been discussed and analyzed repeatedly long ago.
They are widely regarded as just pretext and very unconvincing ones at that. They are all either not actually true or not even remotely worth waging a war for. That is why everyone would expect Putin to repeat them yet another time but doesn't bother engaging with them again.
In short : No one believes Putin when he says he invaded because the NATO expansion. Everyone believes Putin when he dreams of restoring Russia to its old imperial border or fantasizes about partitioning Poland again or similar stuff he did over the years.
I think part of the thing about Russia and NATO is that Russia viewed it in a form of security interest - being part of NATO offered it a degree of protection (because you can't be attacked by your allies) but also that if not a member of the EU and NATO, Russia is effectively "locked out" with vastly limited tools to influence it's old stomping grounds in Eastern Europe.
The obvious problem for Russia with EU and NATO entry is the compatibility issue that it's not remotely in the same political place: one part chaos and corruption and one part the same brutal authoritarianism of the USSR. It's hard enough co-ordinating that many countries. Look at how much trouble Hungary causes because it's got different ideas, and imagine how much havoc a country as large as Russia could cause from within the organisations.
People were happy to discuss Russia moving towards NATO back in the days when Russia looked like it might become a relatively stable and just democracy. Putin and team decided justice and democracy wasn't their vision of Russia, and the wheels duly fell of the wagon of NATO-EU amity.
Yes, I read a transcript. After a long rant about historical grievances, casting Ukraine as not a real independent country, he did indeed finally move on. The fact that he was able to fit more than one topic into an interview isn't really of much importance.
The salient point is, he (and the other architects of Russia's Ukraine policy) have repeatedly denied the existence of Ukraine, and its right to exist independently. They have done so in the context of conferences and interviews about his decision to invade and annex.
Less than this is more than enough for you when we discuss Likud's xenophobia and imperialism. Talk about "negative effort to understand"-- you're excusing and quibbling as they literally tell us Ukraine shouldn't exist.
Despite Russia's best efforts to keep the threat relevant, of course. Whenever an apologist for authoritarianism makes reference to the Nazi threat, it bears repeating that the largest financier and sponsor of neo-Nazis and fascists globally is Russia.
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That doesn't help much since Putin's stance on NATO expansion has always been illegitimate to begin with. Russia has no seat on the table when two sovereign countries negotiate their bonds with each other, and the only reason they want a seat on the table is that they know its harder to subjugate neighbors that have protection. Its not on the west to humor Russia's imperial pretensions.
Of course, he might not have expected to survive long-term when he handed himself over. He might have decided to martyr himself.
Perhaps, but his return was Jan 2021. It was only late 2023 that the Russian government transferred him to an Arctic forced-labour camp, and before that had been denying his lawyers access to him for months. So the authorities had been really ramping up efforts to isolate him recently.
In a more reasonable nation, that might take some blame away for his death, but if the jail sentence is on false pretenses in the first place, it seems a distinction without a difference whether they killed him or he did.
